


Renewal

by alloutforthewar



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-06-03 23:50:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6632026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alloutforthewar/pseuds/alloutforthewar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She had resolved to make female friends this year, to let someone get to know her as an individual unit rather than part of a pair. She was Dana now, she wasn’t Scully as in MulderandScully, and most of the time this felt like something she wanted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Renewal

It was impulsive, really, but Scully reasoned that she deserved to be impulsive at least once every seven or eight years. Mulder had showed her countless times that there could be beauty and joy in spontaneity – of course, he’d also shown her that impulsively deciding to drill holes into one’s head and pour ketamine in was a bad idea. But everything in moderation.

So it was that when Anna, one of the trauma attendings at the hospital mentioned that she lived in the same building as Scully, she invited her over for dinner. And it had been nice, actually. She had resolved to make female friends this year, to let someone get to know her as an individual unit rather than part of a pair. She was Dana now, she wasn’t Scully as in MulderandScully, and most of the time this felt like something she wanted.

There were moments, of course, when she could feel him as acutely as a phantom limb, a voice in her ear, or a scent lingering in the air. There were times when she longed to tell her new colleagues, that there was, in fact, this extraordinary man who loved her, whom she loved, and she often wondered whether others looked at her and saw her as incomplete. She had seen herself – mistakenly – as incomplete without him for twenty years.

But she had made this choice. She had looked him in the eye and told him she was leaving him, and then she had walked out of their house and hadn’t returned. She had moved back to D.C. and was doing work she loved, she was running and going to farmer’s markets and baking on the weekends. She was also drinking more wine than she had in years, but still. At least she felt like she could breathe. Tellingly, she had never even considered drawing up divorce papers, and she felt a small bubble of relief surface every day that passed without him sending them to her. She had left him, but she wasn’t leaving him.

Seven months had passed like this before he had shown up on her doorstep, clean shaven and dressed in a well-fitting suit. He was back at the Bureau, he told her, back with Skinner. The X-Files weren’t open, but he was doing some consulting. He had kissed her on the corner of her mouth, and the moment she had inhaled the scent of his aftershave, of his deodorant, of his sweat and his hair and his skin, she was lost to him.  


They still lived separately. He worked at the Bureau and kept an apartment she refused to visit near where his old one had been in Alexandria. She continued to work at the hospital, she continued to run and to go to farmer’s markets and drink wine alone.

But now, sometimes, maybe once every ten days, he would show up on her doorstep and he wouldn’t leave until early the next morning, kissing the nape of her neck as he slid out of her bed in the predawn light.

She told herself that this was acceptable. After all, even though she had left him, she had never fallen out of love with him. She had just needed to know that she was still a whole person on her own, that she could be happy without him. God knows those last years she hadn’t been happy with him. And they seemed to have found some sort of shaky equilibrium of late. They were absolutely ‘together’, if she made herself put words to it, but they rarely saw each other during daylight hours, and they made a point to speak only of light and inconsequential things. They were married, yes, but right now he was her boyfriend, ridiculous as that sounded, not her husband. It was necessary.

“I can’t believe how much I ate,” Anna groaned from the couch, distracting Scully from her internal monologue. Scully smiled as she rinsed the last of the dishes and joined her guest, tucking her legs beneath her. “Please tell me you don’t cook like that all the time. My self esteem couldn’t take it.”

“No,” Scully reassured her. “You’re a special occasion.” Anna laughed and sipped her wine.

“This place is nice,” she commented, her eyes scanning the bookshelf. Scully saw her linger on the photo of William, eight months old and grinning toothlessly, and she closed her eyes against the question she assumed was coming, but Anna said nothing. “Do you like D.C.?”

“Yes,” Scully replied. “I used to live here, years ago, and it’s nice to be back. Sort of nostalgic.”

“Odd crowd, though,” Anna commented. “Government suits, foreigners and Feds. Hard to meet people.” Anna had mentioned her forays into the dating scene once or twice, and Scully was aware there was an ex-husband, but so far the other woman had graciously avoided direct questions.

“We don’t have the time to meet anyone anyway,” Scully pointed out.

“That’s true. People are too busy needing me to remove foreign objects from up their asses.”

“You’re doing God’s work,” Scully grinned.

“Ha. I don’t think I’d classify it as that.”

There was a sudden knock at the door, and Scully's brow furrowed as she set her glass down.

"Excuse me," she smiled, heading for the door and peering through the peephole. Mulder. She sighed, biting her lip in indecision for a moment and glancing back at Anna before sighing and pulling the door open only to feel her breath sucked from her lungs.

He was bleeding.

“Mulder, oh my god!” She pulled him into the apartment, the sight of the blood trickling down his cheek and staining his collar pushing her thoughts of propriety and privacy aside. “What happened?”

Mulder had caught sight of Anna, who was standing now by the coffee table, eyes wide.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, breaking free of her grasp. “I didn’t know you had company. I should’ve called first. I’ll go.”

“Mulder don't be ridiculous," she snapped, trying to keep the edge of panic out of her voice but knowing he would see right through her. "Mulder this is Anna, Anna, Mulder,” she said, ignoring his protests as she pushed him towards the bathroom. He sat gingerly on the edge of the bathtub looking up at her woefully as she wrestled him out of his jacket and unclipped the weapon from his belt.

“I’m sorry,” he said again as Anna appeared in the doorway.

“Can I do anything?” she asked, her doctors eyes flitting over Mulder’s face.

“Um, in the hall cupboard I’ve got a bag,” Scully said. “Would you mind?” Anna nodded and disappeared. “Mulder I thought you weren’t in the field!" He snorted.

“I’m not. Skinner and I were on our way back from dinner and this woman got mugged right in front of us. He, uh…” he winced as she prodded at the cut above his eyebrow, “he was wearing one of those big rings.”

“You didn’t lose consciousness?”

“No, no. No numbness or tingling, no blurred vision, headaches or nausea, it’s the 12th of May 2015, you’re Scully and I’m Mulder.” Anna chuckled from the doorway, bag in hand.

“GCS 15,” she announced. “You guys have done this before.”

“Ha,” Scully said. “Anna this is my husband, Mulder. Anna works with me at the hospital.”

“Husband?” There was a note of surprised incredulity in the other woman’s voice.

“I’m still a secret, Scully?” Mulder asked, but he was smiling.

“You’re not a secret,” she told him, wiping blood off his face. “It’s complicated.”

“Right,” Anna said. She eyed the gun now resting on the sink. “You're police?”

“FBI,” Mulder grunted, trying to flinch away from Scully’s fingers.

“Wow. You been there long?” Mulder’s eyes flicked up to Scully’s, and there was a beat of silence.

“Ah… Started there in ’86 or ’87 I guess, but we left a long time ago and I only recently joined them again. Ow, Scully!”

"I'm sorry," she murmured, pushing his hair back from his forehead.

“We?” Anna asked, her eyebrows raised.

“Oh,” said Mulder guiltily, looking up at Scully who smiled ruefully at him.

“Mulder and I met there in ’93,” she said to Anna. “We were partners.”

“You were an FBI agent?” Anna grinned, her voice only slightly incredulous.

“Agent Scully,” Mulder smiled back at her. “She was awesome.”

“Mulder,” Scully breathed, but there was a smile on the edge of her lips.

“Go Dana,” Anna smiled.

The forehead wound was superficial and small, and once it was clean and fastened with butterfly sutures Scully was satisfied.

“Did Skinner arrest this mugger at least?” she asked, stepping back and washing her hands.

“Yeah he’s cooling off with DCPD,” Mulder replied, looming up behind her to examine her work in the mirror.

“Satisfactory?” she asked dryly, and saw Anna hide a smile behind her hand. "Go, sit, both of you," she said, waving them towards the sofas.

Anna settled back onto the sofa with her wine as Mulder lowered himself into an armchair, rolling up his shirtsleeves.  
“Hey, you guys must have some great stories!” Anna said brightly. Scully groaned, handing Mulder a steaming mug of coffee before sitting beside Anna.  


“Anna’s been telling me some of her ER horror stories,” she told Mulder, who chuckled.  


“People sticking things places they shouldn’t?” he asked.  


“Pretty much,” Anna said. “Some people are colossally stupid.”  


“You ever had to do that, Scully?” he asked, eyes twinkling. Scully just stared impassively back at him.  


“Not my area of expertise,” she deadpanned. Mulder just bit his lip.  


“I saw a guy once who’d stuck the handle of a squeegee up there,” Anna supplied.  


“A squeegee?!” Mulder grinned, delighted. Anna nodded.  


“Yup. Perfed his bowel. And let me tell you, I’ve seen weirder.”  


“Yeah,” Mulder said, almost wistfully. “A squeegee. I’m not sure our stories can compete with that.” Scully smiled and hid her face in her wine glass, determined not to make eye contact with him. They could most definitely compete with that.

Anna smiled then drained her glass and stretched before getting up from the sofa.

“I should get going Dana. Thank you so much for dinner, it was amazing.”

“No problem. We should do it again.”

“Definitely. Just be aware that if I host it’ll probably be Chinese takeout.”

“Perfect,” Scully smiled.

“Scully lived off that stuff for a decade,” Mulder added. “We know all the best places.” He frowned. “Or at least we did fifteen years ago.”

Scully saw Anna out then came and sat sideways on Mulder’s lap, her legs draped over the arm of the chair. He nuzzled her ear, his hands sliding up her thighs.

“You smell good,” he murmured, and she smiled, turning to press her face into his neck.

“So do you,” she whispered, sucking on the skin underneath his jaw. "Are you sure you're ok?"

"I'm ok, Scully."

"You need to be careful Mulder. I worry about you enough as it is."

"You don't have to." She huffed into his throat in reply. “I’m sorry I didn’t call first. I should have.”

“No,” she said, toying with one of the buttons of his shirt. “You don’t have to do that. I don’t mind.”

“Still,” he said quietly, “You had company. I don’t want you to have to talk about me if you don’t want to.” Scully pulled back slightly to look at him, at his beautiful, expressive face that she could read like a book. Sure enough, fear and anxiety were etched around his eyes as though she’d drawn them there herself with a sharpie.

“Mulder,” she said firmly, cupping his face in her hands, “I know this is hard. I know you’ve been uncertain about where you stand. And it’s still going to take me more time. But you are still my husband, and I still love you. And it’s ok if Anna knows that.” She kissed him lightly on the mouth. “I can be too private, sometimes. I'm working on it.” He smiled, tracing her jaw with a finger.

"So we're ok?" She smiled, her eyes flicking up to the cut on his forehead before settling back on his face.

"We're good, Mulder." She kissed him softly. "We're good."


End file.
